


you are a lover

by spearmiintt



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Cupid & Psyche Fusion, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Betrayal, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Inspired by Eros and Psyche (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, No Smut, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29787993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spearmiintt/pseuds/spearmiintt
Summary: Once upon a time, DreamXD fell for the prettiest mortal he'd ever seen.inspired by the legend of eros and psyche.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 327





	you are a lover

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gummi_wormz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gummi_wormz/gifts).



> new works will be announced on my twitter! @gogyisnotonfire

DreamXD pulls the bow tighter, feeling it nearly slip from the snug position across his chest. “Who?”

His mother, Puffy, laughs, a cruel, humourless noise, pushing her long, brickish-brown locks out of her face. “A mortal,” she spits venomously. “George. Ugly name. But his beauty, child,” she rambles. “No mortal should be prettier than me.” Her grey eyes shone with envy.

“Well,” DreamXD begins, unsure. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“You idiot,” she snarls immediately, jealousy stinging her tone with every word. “Take your bewitching arrows and shoot him. Shoot him so that he falls in love with a creature as ugly as he is. He deserves it,” she adds, seemingly as an justifying afterthought. “No human feels worthy enough to love him, anyways.”

The immortal archer arches an eyebrow. A mortal, beautiful enough to compete with a goddess? But he asks no questions as he shrugs. “Your wish is granted, mother,” he nods. 

It wouldn’t be a hard mission, he reasoned, as he concealed himself into complete invisibility and descended down to the small town Puffy had told him about. He’d never known George, and never would after his arrow’s pierce that night. After all, he had become slightly bored with the usual missions he’d been going on recently. Perhaps this ‘George’ person would take a bit of his apathy away, at least temporarily. It didn’t happen every day, at least, that a mortal’s beauty was enough to make his goddess mother so spitefully jealous.

The town isn’t big, but still somehow buzzes with energy as he walks through a decently filled marketplace, looking carefully for the mushroom hut Puffy had previously described to him.

A fountain bubbles in the center of a small clearing, and a round red roof catches his gaze as he stops in front of it. This was the hut, he already knew. George was nowhere in sight, so he places his bow and sling full of arrows down gently on the marbled edge of the fountain, sitting down and watching the sun absentmindedly.

Had the sun always taken this long to set, he’d wondered for the fifth time that evening, as he lazed on the edge of the fountain, dipping his toes in and sighing, fiddling with one of his arrows as he waited and watched the sun go down for what seemed like an eternity.

A sudden noise behind him nearly causes him to topple headfirst into the burbling water, his head whipping around lightning-quick to see a shorter, slim figure slipping into the hut in front of him, the outline of a basket handle adorning his elbow.

George.

He can’t see his face, as his back is turned and it’s dark, but he can see the window that George pushes open, lighting a candle and placing it in his windowsill as he walks around the room for a few minutes.

The flame goes out soon enough, and DreamXD knows without a doubt that his target is surely asleep.

He pulls his crude smiley mask on over his features and climbs smoothly through the rather small space, right into George’s bedroom. Cursing at the darkness, he reaches for the discarded box of matches on the nightstand, quickly striking one and lighting the candle.

After all, it was important that he could see his shot, he thought lightly to himself as he swung his bow from across his body expertly into his hands, readying the arrow between his fingers as he aimed.

But the light catches the sleeping man’s face, and DreamXD realizes his mother was right. So right, in fact, that he hesitates, pitying the mortal for being born too pretty for his own good.

And then George sits up, looking straight into DreamXD’s eyes.

Startling him so badly that he nearly drops his bow.

The arrow slips from his slacking grasp, pricking him cleanly on the thumb and scratching across his palm, golden beads of ichor gathering quickly in the wake of the sharp edge, dripping down his wrist as he swears under his breath. Because he knows exactly what he’s done to himself. And there was no escape for those fated by love.

The effect is nearly instantaneous, DreamXD realizes, as George’s candlelit features begin to jump out at him, making his pulse quicken slightly as he walks over slowly and reaches an invisible hand out, pulling away a split second before it would’ve made contact with the pale expanse that was George’s cheek.

Unconsciously, in a futile attempt to run from the fate the arrow’s wound had already sealed, the archer turns and climbs swiftly back through George’s window, watching as the brunette frowns and walks towards the candle to blow it out.

He walks back to the fountain and puts his head in his hands. He’s failed, and even worse, he’s done the exact opposite of what Puffy had asked of him. 

He wipes the invisibility from himself, instead deciding to conceal himself as a regular human being, fluttering his large wings twice before letting them fade temporarily from between his shoulder blades. 

He nearly doesn’t notice the sun rising as he looks down at the scabbed-over wound on his hand, caught up in the disappointment and moroseness of failure. What would he tell Puffy? Of course, there was a real chance Puffy had already sensed or seen what had happened that night; she was a goddess, after all.

“Hello,” a lilting, accented voice draws him from his trance of disappointment.

He knows it’s George, without even having to look up. His heart begins to jump in his chest as his electric green eyes meet with the other man’s warm honeyed brown, full of curiosity and kindness.

“Who are you?” he asks gently, in the same mellow tone.

“Um,” DreamXD falters. “Clay,” he lies, knowing it’d make everything ten times worse if he were to reveal his true identity. “I’m Clay.”   


“Oh,” George’s smile flickers, almost too obviously unsure of what to say. “You’re not from around here.”   


“No, I’m not,” the blonde affirms, standing up and realizing he’s nearly half a foot taller than the brunette as he looks down. “I’m, uh, trying to get home, actually. Just passing through. I stopped to drink from the fountain.”   


“Come inside,” George immediately invites, face brightening up as he turns and opens the door to his hut. “Eat with me.”   


DreamXD knows, of course, that he’s a god who doesn’t need to eat, or drink, or sleep. But the pull of the intoxicating attraction that’s been quietly growing inside of him since he’d wounded himself calls his name gently towards the open door. “Okay,” he immediately agrees.

He sits at the rickety wooden table, absentmindedly petting the gray cat that’s perched in his lap, secretly watching as George moves around his kitchen, stirring the bubbling pot of savoury-smelling mushroom stew on the stove.

It’s served in two rough wooden bowls twenty minutes later, the last drops from a jug of milk filling the tall glasses in front of them.

“Where are you originally from?” George asks, blowing on the steaming soup.

“Across the sea,” DreamXD says, realizing such a narrative would fit his out-of-place character not too badly.

“That explains the accent!” George laughs, and DreamXD nearly sighs with relief.

“Oh, yeah,” he chuckles a little as he eats the stew, which takes him aback at how nice it tastes. “This- this is really good,” he compliments, and wants to do it a million times over again as he watches George light up.

“It’s the only thing I can eat other than carrots and potatoes out here,” the brown-eyed man grins, and DreamXD doesn’t know what to do as he feels his breath catch in his throat at the crooked smile.

So he just nods and clears his throat, slightly too loudly, and takes a sip of milk from his glass.

“Is where you’re trying to get to far from here? My neighbor might be able to lend his mule,” George offers, after a few silent minutes of them chewing peacefully.

“Oh, no,” the blonde rushes out. “But thank you, for the offer.”

Curse Puffy, DreamXD thinks to himself, as he realizes exactly how beautiful George is, both soul and face, kind to no end and soft features something he’d never be able to escape from, no matter how hard he strained against the rope of infatuation.

They finish their meal a little bit after, somehow slipping into a comfortable silence, though they’d never met before today.

George wraps a jar of strawberry jam, a butter knife, and a loaf of grained bread into a satchel for the blonde, though he protests.

“You don’t have to do that,” DreamXD says, trying to push the bundle away.

“I want to, Clay,” the brunette smiles up at him, gently prying his arms apart to nestle the bag between them.

DreamXD feels like he’s become the sun and moon and stars at George’s touch.

“What have you done?” his mother glares at him, splittingly angry, as she paces around her chambers back at Olympus. “Let me see the wound.”  
DreamXD opens his palm reluctantly, the scratch contrasting with the paleness of his skin.

“This is exactly why I don’t trust you with things like this,” she groans, reaching for her goblet of wine and taking a sip. “Now that you’ve done it, though…” she trails off in exasperation as she sighs. “I knew you would fail.” 

It stung him deeply, to hear his mother tell him such things. “Mother, I-”   


“Be with him, if you must! Not much I can do, now that you’ve cut yourself on your own arrow,” she grimaces, pausing to look deeply in his eyes. “But given the chance,” she warned. “I will try and stop you. He’ll never be your equal, either. God and mortal,” she laughs. “Who’d ever heard of such a thing?”

\------

George knocks twice on the door of the wooden cottage in the clearing, waiting as he hears footsteps shuffling behind the door and stepping back as Hannah opens the door.

“Hannah,” he greets, smiling a bit as she grins. 

“George! It’s been a little, come in,” she swings the door open wider. “What are you doing here?”   


George sighs, smile slipping from his face. “I think I’m cursed, and I need your help.”   


Fifteen minutes of flipping through old books later, Hannah laughs and stands up from her chair. “You’re not cursed, thankfully,” she affirms. “It’s something else that makes you unlovable.”  
“Well, what is it?” George asks, tentative of the answer as his gaze sweeps over the tomes and tomes of papers on the table.

“You’re-” she pauses to giggle again. “You’re simply just too beautiful. No mortal thinks they’re worthy of you.”   


“What?” George’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “How does that happen?”   


“It’s really not supposed to, honestly,” she shrugs, as she pours water into a scrying bowl and lights a candle, silence settling over them as she closes her eyes and begins to meditate for a few minutes. “You have to go to the mountain tonight, past the next town over,” she tells him as she opens her eyes. “Your lover awaits you there.”

He thanks her for her help, bidding her farewell as she wishes him good luck, walking through the forest and back to his hut.

George swallows his apprehension and uncertainty three hours later, placing a thick sweater, a knitted blanket and a round, paper-wrapped sponge cake in a small backpack before setting out towards the distant mountaintops, closing the door behind him and praying that he isn’t found dead atop a summit the next morning.

Would the one awaiting him find him beautiful enough to love him back? 

He stops, midway up the mountain, thoughts swirling through his head, to drink from a burbling stream, wiping his mouth after sipping and moving on.

Finally, with the moon high in the sky, stars twinkling in his eyes, he stops at the top of the mountain, slightly out of breath. 

He finds an oversized toadstool and takes a seat on it, pulling on the oversized crewneck he’d brought with him and taking a few bites out of the cake that, thankfully, hadn’t crumbled too badly in his bag.

Sleep pulls at George’s eyelids after a bit, and he realizes with a jolt that he’s been awake for nearly the entire night. He throws the blanket over a rather flat rock, pulling off his sweatshirt and folding it into a rough bundle, nestling his head onto it as he lays down. He could nap while waiting, couldn’t he?  
Two things steal George away that night. First, the embrace of sleep, the fairy of dreams coming to occupy his mind.

Second, the breeze of the western wind, lifting his sleeping form and carrying him away to a place unknown.

He wakes up slowly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he notices it’s still dark, given the glimmer of the moonlight through the window.

A window.

Where was he? His head swirled with thoughts ranging from panic to curiosity as he looked frantically around for something, anything. The pillow under his head, though, is plush, and the blankets thrown over him are thick and soft.

It wasn’t a bad place to be, George realizes.

A rustle at his side prompts him to turn around, locking eyes with a servant fanning a goblet of wine on a nightstand. “Who are you?” he asks softly, somehow knowing they mean him no harm.

But they merely smile dimly at him before fading into the shadows, one minute there and the next minute gone.

“Wait!” George cries, getting up and pulling the blankets off of him, running towards where he’d just seen the figure of the servant, feeling the space for what he’d thought he’d seen.

Nothing but air meets his grasping fingers, dark shadows dancing around his vision. There was no light in the room, save for the moonbeams on his face.

And then, a gentle hand on his waist. “Hello,” a mellow voice brushes his eardrums.

George whips around and reaches out, feeling sturdy shoulders, stubbled jawline, sharp collarbone. “Who are you?” he asks, hands tracing over the man’s subtly muscled arms.

“Your lover,” he says back, and George can hear the tinge of a smile in his tone. “Let me take you somewhere, pretty one.”   


The brunette smiles back, despite himself. “Where?”   


And he feels his hand intertwine with a larger, warmer one, pulling him gently as a soft force, akin to the waves in an ocean, push him forward.

“Somewhere only we know,” comes the quiet, amorous response.

George feels the tickle of daisy stems on his ankles after a few minutes of what seems to be floating before he sees them, reaching down and landing slowly on his feet, brushing his fingertips across the soft petals. 

“Do you like it?” 

He whirls around, hoping to finally see what the other man looks like, only to feel his face fall in disappointment as he’s met with a crude smiley mask looking back at him. “Your face,” he can’t help but to blurt out. “Are you as pretty as you say I am?”

The taller man tugs at the bow and sling of arrows across his body, something George hadn’t noticed until now. His shoulders shake slightly with laughter. “No,” his laugh comes out roughly sweet as he moves closer and combs his fingers gently through the brown locks atop George’s head. “I could only hope to be as pretty as the one who enchants me so.”   


“How did you know flower fields were my favorite place to be?” George eventually asks, blushing and moving away from the other man’s touch to continue running his fingers through the  stems at his feet.   


“Something told me,” he responds softly, and a split second later brings a bouquet of daisies, seemingly with no effort at all, from behind his back. “For you,” and he reaches out and hands them to an awestruck George. 

“How did you do that?” the brown-eyed man blurts out, turning the flawless blossoms over a few times in his hands. 

“Do you like them?” and the fond smile tinges the taller man’s tone again.

“Yes.”   


“Come here,” he pats the soft, grassy ground next to him. “Tell me about you.”   


“There’s not much to say,” George laughs, despite himself. “I live alone, in the middle of a mushroom forest.”   


“I know that already,” the other man chuckles. “Anything else?”   


“No, not really.”   


And George climbs the mountain everyday, fresh sponge cake and same thick sweatshirt in his backpack, something he can’t quite name pulling him back to the flat rock he slept on the first night he’d scaled the peak, a piece inside of him pleading to see the mysterious lover man he’d grown to quietly enjoy the touch of, feeling the mysterious forces that pulled him to the cloud-soft bed, loving the sturdy grip of the larger hand that took him to the same field every night. 

It was fun falling in love, he realized. Some nights they’d split the cake George would bring, eating it and laughing about silly nothings that only made sense to them. Other nights, they’d chase each other through the flowers like his friends would with him when he was a young child, until both of them were too tired to run anymore, so they’d simply just hold each other and lay amongst the grass contentedly, sweaty and sleepy, looking at the stars and moon together. 

It was unique, the way they loved each other.

\------

The night feels different, electrical, wild as the moon rises, three weeks from when George had first met and felt the touch of the one he’d become enchanted with.  It was the same, mostly, what they had done together, chasing each other and running through the field playfully, cake untouched in George’s backpack.  He laid awake in the stronger man’s arms, watching the moon move slowly in the sky. 

It was unfair, the wicked yearn for the unknown struck him suddenly, vicelike and vicious, to have not seen the face of his lover man, when he could always see his.  Selfish want to know as much as one could made him mortal, and he sealed the fate he couldn’t see as he unconsciously reached up and touched the porcelain mask upon the other man’s visage.

He pulled upwards, gently.

An arrow, rolling out of the sling at the man’s side, tumbled towards George’s exposed wrist, cutting his arm ever so slightly.

He doesn’t even notice as he stares at the face of the dozing man in front of him. A face he’d only heard rumors, legends, myths about. 

Blonde hair, sharp cheekbones, a square jawline. The bow and arrows.

He had fallen in love with a god. 

Something flickers within him as he looks down at the wetness on his arm, seeing the dark droplets of blood inching their way down and staining his cream-colored jumper.

The arrow had touched him, he realized, as he reaches up with his non-wounded hand, cupping DreamXD’s face in his palm, leaning in and pressing his lips to his.

And for a moment, ephemeral, he feels soft lips kiss him back before pulling away.

“Why have you done this?” DreamXD asks sadly, wiping at the drop of George’s blood that had fallen onto his hand, betrayal and longing swirling like whirlpools in a pair of piercingly alive green eyes.

“You’re a god,” George breathes, feeling like he’s drowning in his quick-growing infatuation as he tries to reach out, pull him in again, kiss the sharp edge of his jawline.

“And you’re a mortal,” he whispers, smile slipping off of his face as he stands up and pulls his cotton shirt off, revealing a toned stomach, wings sprouting from his back, large hand coming to intertwine George’s smaller, outstretched one for a brief moment before pulling away again. “Curiosity will never forgive your mortality, pretty one.” And DreamXD leaps up and takes flight, steadily receding figure growing farther and farther away from him as he soars away into the glow of the moonlight.

George falls upon his knees and weeps.

He cries for what seems like hours, knowing that DreamXD’s words are true, feeling despair at the sharp cut of loss as he felt desire to the soft caress of longing, bound to the other man by heart and mind with the pinprick of an arrow.

“Why do you cry?” an unfamiliar, feminine murmur reaches his ears as he looks up.

Long russet locks and stormy eyes, tall slim figure casting a shadow over him, match his honeyed brown as he wipes the tears off of his face. He immediately knows her as Puffy, goddess of love. “I’ve lost my lover, Your Grace,” he cries, looking down as a sob chokes him.

And he stares at the ground, unable to catch the unreadable yet predictable trance of voracious victory that crosses Puffy’s features.

“It will be alright,” she tells him, gently as she can through her glee at finding DreamXD’s love at such a low, weakened point, easy to keep out of her son’s way, almost too easy to mislead as she reaches down and wipes the tears off of his face. “I know how you can find him again.”

“Please,” George begs, voice raw-edged and broken as he grasps her fingers into his. “I lost him at my fault. I have to-”   


“I understand,” she reassures, honey dripping into her tone as she reaches into the satchel at her side and pulls out a scratched wooden box. “You’ve lost some of your beauty,” she notes, albeit just to fool him. “Find Minx, queen of the Underworld, and ask her to place a shred of beauty in this box. Bring it back to me, and I will bring your lover back to you.” Puffy keeps her voice firm, instructive, trustworthy as George takes the box with careful tentativeness.

And without hesitation, she laughs and swoops into the darkness, George unable to read the true intentions behind her cackle as he turns the wooden structure over in his hands, standing up after a few minutes and pulling his backpack tighter upon his shoulder.

But he’s not two steps out of the field when a light-haired, young-looking woman approaches him slowly. “You’ve lost your person,” she tells him softly, looking up at him with round, luminous yet kind eyes.

“I have,” George agrees shakily. “Uh, George,” he introduces, “My name is George.”   


“Nihachu,” she greets back in the same slow, soft tone. “I’ve lost them, too.”   


George doesn’t know what to say, so he merely pulls the still-whole sponge cake out of his bag and breaks off a small piece, handing it to the woman in front of him and sitting down next to her on the side of the dirt path as she chews slowly.

“Let me help you find him,” she offers, standing up and brushing the crumbs from her long-sleeved tunic.

And George somehow immediately knows she means no harm. “Okay,” he accepts, standing up as well and beginning to follow in her footsteps down the road. 

\------

George realizes, sun high in the sky on the first day of their journey through a neighboring town, that him and Nihachu don’t have much in common, though he finds himself making peace with the fact that that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“I’m a painter,” she tells him lightly, as he hands her a few rusty bronze pieces to combine with the ones she already has in her palm, noisy clamor of the marketplace filling their ears. “What about you?”  
“Oh, uh,” George falters. “I suppose you could call me a farmer,” he chuckles a bit. “I live alone, in the middle of a forest, so…” he trails off. “Not much to do, you know?”

She laughs a bit. “Yes, I understand.”   


They keep going through the small, close-knit town, Nihachu having bought an array of foods to fill her cross-bodied knapsack, splitting a slice of dried mutton between them as they exchange conversation.

“Where are you trying to go?” she eventually ends up asking him, swallowing the food in her mouth as she looks into his eyes.

“To the Underworld,” he answers as stoically as he can manage, looking away as thoughts of DreamXD’s fleeting touch fills his mind again. “Do you know how to get there?”   


It’s quiet for a long moment as Nihachu stays silent, eating the last bit of meat in her hands as she looks down at her feet. “Yes,” she eventually answers. “I lost the one I loved to Hades’ binds much too early, you know,” a wistful smile crosses her face as she sighs. “But I think you will succeed in your mission,” Nihachu grasps his hand firmly for a second before dropping it back down. “You love him enough to keep the darkness of the Underworld from hurting you.”   


George doesn’t understand what she means, but he doesn’t question it as they finally stop at the edge of the town, using a bit more of the coins they have between them to rent two beds at an ordinary-looking lodge.

The next morning, they set off in the same eastern direction, talking about any and every subject under the sun to keep them occupied during the long, desolate stretches of road that seem to go on for eternities.

“What do you like to paint?” he asks her, kicking at a clod of dirt absentmindedly.

“Anything that I can look at, really,” she smiles fondly, eyes glazing over in a wistful fashion as she seems to remember what she does best. “The last piece I finished was supposed to be abstract, though. Do you own any animals?”   


And their talks continued in a like fashion, bouncing from question to answer, subject to subject, and George knew that they didn’t have much in common, but being able to share the unspoken weight of loss with someone who wanted to talk with him was enough.

Three days and two nights later, having spent nearly all of their money on food and lodging, they finally arrived as night began to fall at the bank of a dark-flowing, quick-moving river.

“Carry this in your mouth,” she says, shining one of their last silver pieces on her shirt and dropping it into his palm. “Once I leave you and the moon is high, Bad will come. You must pay him enough to take you across the river.”   


“What will I-”   


“Shh,” Nihachu shushes him, lowering her tone and beginning to speak at a faster pace. “Take these,” she instructs, reaching into her bag and pulling out two whole loaves of dry, coarse-looking rye bread. “Don’t eat anything else in the Underworld, or your soul will be bound to the dead forever. Do you still have a bit of that cake in your bag?”   


George swings his backpack off of his shoulders and feels around for the soft texture of the sweet snack, face lighting up with relief. “I still have a good bit of it.”

“Split it in half,” she tells him urgently, eyes darting around before meeting his again. “Feed it to the hound, when you encounter him. It’ll keep him distracted, just long enough for you to run past. And remember to never let yourself touch the bloody vines.”   


“How do you know all of this?” he can’t help but to ask, taking the loaves of bread she’d handed him and placing them carefully into his open backpack, opening his mouth and holding the coin in his cheek.

“I was once someone like you,” she smiles brokenly, luminous eyes never ceasing to glow in the moonlight. “Goodbye, George, and good luck.” And without another minute of hesitation, Nihachu seemed to simply melt into the night, back turned away from the brunette one second and completely gone the next.

George is scared. He knows, as his heart rate begins to climb and his palms begin to grow clammy as time passes. He takes a seat on a rock by the edge of the river, watching the current rush past him with a faint whooshing noise, looking up every once in a while to watch the moon steadily climb in the sky.

Finally, when the moon is just past directly above his head, he looks down the river and sees a slowly-approaching gondola, a red-cloaked man at the helm, rowing it towards him. 

He stands up and pulls at the straps on his backpack to keep it tight on his shoulders, taking a deep breath and tucking the coin under his tongue. 

“Mortal,” the man, Bad, leers at him from behind a hood, outstretching a hand with red-stained fingernails. “You are a lover, are you not?”  
George says nothing, knowing better than to trust someone from the Underworld, merely taking the coin from his mouth and wiping it with the still-bloodstained sleeve of his sweater, determinedly pushing away memories of the night DreamXD’s arrow had cut his wrist, and dropping it into the open, filthy palm in front of him.

“Get in, then,” the man turns and picks up his oar again as George steps into the boat and takes a seat, beginning to row with the current, turning them around and moving faster than it had taken to get to the bank.

“Don’t touch the bloodvines,” Bad grins, pulling them to the shore after what seems like an eon, George already knowing that he’d be entering the Underworld soon. “Or do!” A wicked cackle escapes from his lips as the mysterious, hooded ferryman turns the gondola around and begins to row away, down the dark river again. 

The brunette gulps and turns around, taking his first unsteady steps into the darkness in front of him.

The first obstacle he knows how to face, silently thanking Nihachu a thousand times over as he throws half of his sponge cake and bolts away from the snarling, gargantuan hound in front of him, wiping the sweat off of his brow and slowing down eventually once he’s sure he’s safe from the creature.

But some of the other obstacles are harder.

Like the strung-up, thick slices of dried pork that George can see in the marketplace as he approaches, white streaks of fat and black specks of spice adorning each piece, the smell more than enough to cause his mouth to salivate greedily at the sight. 

He’s nearly about to reach into his pocket for the last of his bronze coins and purchase a piece, give into the urge, when he remembers the feel of DreamXD’s fingers wrapped around his waist, something he’d never be able to feel again if he bound his soul for eternity to the Underworld by letting the petty push of hunger take control. 

He grabs a fistful of the coarse-grained bread from his backpack and pushes it into his mouth instead, walking quickly through the shops and stands to keep temptation at bay as much as he can manage.

He feels entranced, strangely enough, by the vines that ooze droplets of blood, crawling all around the forests he walks through. They seem to call his name, alike the way a siren would, reaching towards him, pulling him in. But his friend’s warnings of never touching the plant echo true in his head as he forcefully pulls his hands away and plants them over his ears, walking nearly deaf through the trees the rest of the way.

Days of walking later, he feels violent fear worming itself in the pit of his stomach as the gates to Minx’s castle open, bile rising up his throat and nearly causing him to vomit. But he swallows hard and grits his teeth, knowing he’ll be back with his lover soon as he walks determinedly through the open iron-wrought bars, holding his lit torch up above his head.

“Come forward, mortal,” the goddess of the Underworld commands in a thickly accented voice, stoic expression plain on her face as she looks down at George, who immediately falls to his knees with the open box outstretched in his hands. “State your business here.”   


“Your Grace,” he chokes out, fear and heartbreak clear in his voice as his head fills with the realization of just how desperate he is to be reunited with DreamXD, blinking away the tears falling down his face as he looks at the floor. “I humbly request a shroud of your beauty, so that I may be united again with my lover.”   


Silence meets his ears as Minx contemplates the trembling man in front of her. She places a hand on his shoulder, and can see the journey he’s born to come to her, sees the honesty and truth in the love he’s fallen into, sees the longing, yearning, emptiness left in the wake of his loneliness. But she was the goddess of the Underworld, unable to truly sympathize with the one in front of her, after everything had been ripped so cruelly away in the name of Hades’ possessive infatuation from her one day, a long time ago.

“Of course,” she decidedly murmurs, tone unreadable, after a few minutes, summoning an ordinary-looking flower petal and placing it into the box, closing the latch firmly. “Leave now, mortal. You’ve received what you’ve come for.”   


And George immediately stands up and bows out, box clutched firmly in his hands.

The same temptations scream at him as he walks back out of the Underworld, if not doubly hard to ignore this time around. His hands wrap around the latched box instead of over his ears as he forces himself through the bloodvine forests. The last crumbs of his bread disappear long before he meets the marketplace with the thick slices of meat again, so he has nothing to shove into his mouth as he begins to inevitably salivate again at the sight of the strung-up pork chops. But he grips the box tighter, the key to seeing his lover again firm in his hands as he holds his head high and walks through the crowded bazaar.

He’s beyond tired, having not slept in what seems like a century, but the thought of his lips meeting again with DreamXD’s lips pushes him forward until he’s back in the face of the snarling hound, which he knows how to overcome as he reaches into his pocket for the last of the now-stale sweet cake, throwing it towards the massive barking dog as hard as his exhausted body lets him. 

Fortunately, it’s enough, and soon enough he’s back at the bank of the river that Bad had rowed him across nearly a week ago, holding his very last silver coin under his tongue as he waits for the gondola to come again.

Finally, George is at the foot of Puffy’s palace, closed box clutched in his hands, mind swimming with sleepless delusion. 

Only, one more obstacle he’d never predicted throws itself towards him at a pace faster than the swoop of a swallow’s wing.

He catches his reflection in a puddle of water. 

And he recoils immediately, hands flying up to his face as he realizes just what the journey to the Underworld had done to him. Puffy was right, and the truth stings him.

Darkened circles line the edges of his eyelids, hair messy and disheveled, both most likely the result of his harrowing walk through the land of the dead. 

It wouldn’t hurt to take a bit of the beauty Minx had given him for himself, he reasoned with himself. 

Amongst what made a man mortal included greed and vanity, the thought strikes George, too late already as he lifts the lid of the box slowly, watching as the pink petal the goddess of the Underworld had given him swirled upwards once in the air before shriveling and falling downwards. It wasn’t beauty in the box, he noticed, thoughts already clouding as darkness began to pull at the edges of his vision. It was slumber.

His eyes closed automatically as he swooned at the foot of Puffy’s palace, asleep before his head hit the rough dirt road.

\------

“Please,” DreamXD looks into his mother’s mirror, face stricken as he watches George’s chest rise and fall in rhythm with the dance that was the deep unconsciousness Minx had entranced him into. “Let me save him.”   


Puffy sighs in wistful defeat. She’d never seen someone, much less a mortal, bare and survive the deepest parts of the Underworld as well as DreamXD’s lover had, in the vain-at-best hope to be reunited one day. 

“Be with him, then,” she lets a small smile break onto her face. “I’m sorry, dear one. I should’ve never tried to stop love.” She pauses, considering her next words as she brushes a stray lock of blonde away from her son’s worried face. “Make him a god, too.”   


Psyche loved Eros and Eros loved Psyche, leaping across the bonds of mortality and immortality alike stone to stone in a fast-flowing river, until they were both safely at the bank of eternity, intertwined upon each other’s bodies. 

DreamXD’s face lightens immediately as he pulls the strap of his bow tighter across his body. “Thank you,” he breathes, hugging her for a moment before letting go. “For everything.”   
\------

It feels like days later when George opens his eyes, long eyelashes fluttering on his cheeks as he reaches up and rubs the sleep from his vision, the alarming sensation of slumber quite literally being wiped from his face setting in a moment later as he feels the gentle downwards stroke of a thumbpad on his chin.

“George,” a familiar voice says, piercing green falling onto his honeyed brown as the winged figure crouches above him. “I found you.”  


“You came back,” he marvels quietly, sitting up and intertwining his smaller hand with DreamXD’s larger one. 

“I’d come back in a thousand lifetimes to save you, pretty one,” the blonde murmurs, free hand not leaving the cupped position it’s nestled in on his cheek. “Did you know that I’m in love with you?”   


A tear trails down George’s cheek. “You can’t love me,” he begins to weep, as he’d so often been doing in the past weeks. “I’m not worthy of the love of a god, not one that I’ve betrayed.”   


“Oh, George,” the green-eyed man whispers. “It’s me who’s not worthy of your love.” And he pulls his hands from the brunette’s cheek and grasp, placing them firmly in between his shoulder blades for a few seconds before pulling away.

Blinding light erupts from George’s very core as warmth spreads down his back, feathered wings just as elegant as DreamXD’s erupting from where he’d touched him. He gasps, body suspended in the air for a few moments before his feet meet with the earth beneath him again, left speechless as he stares up at his lover.    


“You were always more than my equal,” DreamXD smiles as he reaches out and strokes at the slightly ruffled feathers on George’s wings, smoothing them down effortlessly. “Bravery outweighed betrayal for Eros and Psyche, my love.”   


George breathes in deeply, falling into the sturdy chest of the man in front of him, who easily wraps his arms around his smaller figure, reaching down to press his lips to his.

The moment was existence, love holding true, emotion’s rough and soft edges alike, everything and nothing in between, fatally perfect.

“Marry me,” the taller man murmurs, breaking away, rumble of his voice hitting the ear that he has pressed to his chest in their embracing figures.   


“Forever,” he breathes back.


End file.
